Friday, June 18, 2021

A reminder to be kind, and that we all share the same interest.

I want to start off by saying I think the rust community is the most amazingly supportive and helpful technical community I’ve ever come across. I often see fellow rustaceans giving the most detailed and helpful answers, even to posts that may not have been made in good faith. But if any user so much as mentions the word blockchain on this subreddit, they will most definitely be downvoted into nothingness.

Every morning I wake up and browse r/rust, excited to see what cool things are being done in the rust community, and I find at least one post or comment from someone who is genuinely interested in and even outright praising rust, but they mention they don’t hate blockchain, so they get heavily downvoted and get many fewer responses than the rest of the community. Often with a few rustaceans directly replying to that user, telling them r/rust has an irrational hatred of blockchain so they may be better asking for information elsewhere.

https://www.rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct

This is a direct violation of our own code of conduct, which states things like

- We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all- Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a right answer.

- We will exclude you from interaction if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behavior. We interpret the term “harassment” as including the definition in the Citizen Code of Conduct;

And here is one of the definitions of harassment in the Citizen Code of Conduct:

- Sustained disruption of community events, including talks and presentations.

Due to the importance of maintaining network consensus, the fact that network transactions are immutable, and the fact that some of these systems have billions if not trillions of USD value running through them. Blockchain developers are extremely security focused. This means rust is an excellent language for them to use. It might even be the single most Ideal language for the needs of the blockchain industry. Yet every time a developer in the blockchain space comes to this subreddit, genuinely polite and excited to learn about rust in an attempt to better themselves, their work, and the entire rust community. The message they get from the r/rust community, is very clearly “we don’t want you here”. Either stated passively through getting downvoted and not replied to, or flat out stated actively by user’s comments. This is like Bullying the fat kid for going to the gym and trying to better themselves.

While it is no secret that the permissionless and pseudo-anonymous nature of blockchain has allowed some bad actors to use the technology to perform scams. Blockchain is a useful technology, and that statement is being continuously backed up by the ever interested free market. Bitcoin recently went over a one trillion dollar market cap. Many of the world’s fortune 500 companies have recently started investing billions into Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. The country of El Salvador just signed into law that they recognize Bitcoin as legal tender, and is requiring that every business and government office in the country accept it as a form of payment. They even let you pay your taxes in Bitcoin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/nvn4sa/el_salvador_has_passed_the_law_its_official/

Whether you like it or not, crypto currencies are growing in popularity every year and are here to stay.

Provided we don’t drive them away first and blockchain interested developers decide they like Rust, they may become the ones who help you with your next rust problem, who wrote or maintain that library you come to use every day, or who help you with your next project.

Yes, it is known that a possible majority of current Rust job openings are for blockchain companies, and it is completely understandable that that might be frustrating to developers who love Rust but aren't particularly interested in working with blockchain. I am not advocating that we upvote every blockchain post we see. But I am asking that we not actively downvote anyone who mentions even a casual interest in blockchain, and for us to keep our own community guidelines in mind before downvoting others.

"Bitcoin cannot be destroyed." What's happening to the mining industry

Three Chinese provinces have already banned cryptocurrency mining. How this will affect the crypto-mining industry in the long term and which countries are the most promising for companies mining digital assets right now

Cryptocurrency mining has already been banned at the state level in three Chinese provinces. This has already been announced by the authorities of Yunnan, Qinghai and Xinjiang provinces. In this regard, major miners have already begun to leave China and move equipment to other countries. Against this background, the bitcoin network hash rate declined to 99 Eh/s in early June. As of June 15 19:50 MSK, the hash rate of the main cryptocurrency has partially recovered and is 130 Eh/s, according to the Bitinfocharts service. RBC-Crypto experts explained how the cryptocurrency mining sphere is transforming based on recent events.

Relocation trend

It is premature to talk about the complete exodus of miners from China, says co-founder of data center LAZM Roman Nekrasov. According to him, some provinces have not yet introduced a ban on cryptocurrency mining. For example, in one of the main hubs of cryptomining - Sichuan province - a ban is expected from September, says the expert.

But according to Roman Nekrasov, there is still a trend of relocation among miners, as companies are now considering moving equipment to other Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan. Some mining companies are considering relocating to the United States and Canada, where hydropower is well developed, the expert noted.

Impact on mining

The effect of such bans and restrictions in the short term is negative, because any attack on bitcoin miners leads to concerns about the stability of the network, said Roman Nekrasov. However, according to him, it can lead to positive consequences in a few years, such as an increase in decentralization of the network.

For any system, such restrictions are turbulence and uncertainty, says Nikita Soshnikov, director of cryptocurrency exchange service Alfacash. He believes that the owners of mining enterprises, who are forced in a hurry to look for places to relocate or decide to close the farm, are in a very difficult situation.

The only positive thing the expert sees in China's ban on mining is another demonstration that bitcoin cannot be destroyed by any restrictions.

"The system is designed decentralized enough to withstand such attacks. I cannot call the decision of the Chinese authorities anything other than an attack," Nikita Soshnikov explained.

Promising countries for relocation

The U.S. and Canada are considered the most promising countries for the relocation among cryptocurrency mining companies, said Roman Nekrasov. According to him, these countries already have a fairly clear regulation and taxation, but energy prices can be much higher than what miners are used to in China.

Also miners may consider Brazil, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, but these countries lack clear regulation, so small companies that are willing to work in a gray area migrate there, explained the co-founder of the data center LAZM.

According to many parameters Russia is suitable for the relocation of miners, but so far the interest in the Russian sites of the cryptocurrency mining companies are not experiencing, explained Roman Nekrasov. In his opinion, the Chinese are not ready to risk business because of the unfriendly investment climate and non-transparent crypto-regulation.

Nikita Soshnikov does not rule out that some of the miners from China may move to Georgia. The expert reminded that Chinese investors already have mining facilities in the economic zone near Tbilisi. Cryptocurrency regulation in Georgia is very friendly, the director of cryptocurrency exchange service Alfacash added.

Green Energy

The transition of cryptocurrency mining to green energy may increase the attractiveness of digital assets in the long term, said the co-founder of data center LAZM. According to him, it will happen anyway, even if not directly, then through tweets from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Ilon Musk. When the businessman once again starts openly supporting bitcoin, rather than attacking the coin, his multimillion army of fans will rush to buy the cryptocurrency and its quotations will go up, Roman Nekrasov is sure.

"Musk has a very populist approach, but as we can see, it works," the expert added.

On June 14, Ilon Musk said that Tesla will once again start accepting bitcoin for payment after most of the miners will use renewable energy sources. After the businessman's statement, the main cryptocurrency rose by 12% and exceeded the $40,000 mark.

Best way to get Bitcoin off of exchange and onto Polygon/Matic?

So I have been trying to figure out the best way to get Bitcoin off of a centralised exchange and onto Polygon, without triggering any taxable events and paying minimal gas fees. Turns out this is a bit of a pain, but I have come up with a few options:

Option 1: Sell BTC for Wrapped BTC on the exchange, withdraw WBTC to Ethereum, bridge WBTC to Polygon. This is not ideal as selling BTC for WBTC on an exchange would technically count as a sale, and likely trigger a taxable event. There's also the gas fees for withdrawing + bridging to Polygon.

Option 2: Use RenBridge to convert BTC to renBTC on Polygon. You send your BTC to a gateway address on the Bitcoin blockchain, and renBTC on Polygon is minted for you in return. This would likely not trigger a taxable event, as you have not technically sold your BTC. Gas fees would also likely be lower than option 1. This seems like the best option, however I have no experience using RenBridge, so I am a bit apprehensive about it.

Option 3: If on Binance, sell your BTC for stablecoins, withdraw stablecoins to Binance Smart Chain, bridge your coins from BSC to Polygon, then buy WBTC or renBTC on Polygon. This method is quite straightforward with minimal gas fees, but you trigger a taxable event when you convert BTC to stablecoins. You could also use OKcoin exchange to withdraw stables directly to Polygon and skip the bridge part.

Does anyone have any experience using RenBridge, or have any other methods for doing this?

Missed #Dev Adovocate? watch the event here!

Missed #Dev Advocate u/solangegueiros alongside our friends at u/SovrynBTC and u/moneyonchainok talking all things #DeFi4Bitcoin on #RSK with the Greek #Bitcoin community?

Watch the event on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1rzcUlGGedg Thanks for organizing, @Thess_Bitcoin!

SPRT - share price increase is unavoidable

Author: u/dkbbroker(Karma: 537, Created: Jan-2021).

SPRT - share price increase is unavoidable on r/stockmarket

PICTURES DETECTED: this DD post is better viewed in it's original post

INTRO

The upcoming merger of Support.com and Greenidge in the 3rd quarter must, according to all rules of the market, lead to a massive price increase.

In this DD I will show you why this is the case, based on the company data, the annual reports and the balance sheets of the companies. All my theses I will provide with the original sources of the companies, so that all data can be checked/confirmed by yourself.

I will try to keep it short, but still want to give you a good overall view.

COMPANY PROFILES

This merger involves the two companies Support.com and Greenidge. Below is a brief overview.

Support.com, as the name suggests, provides technical and customer support services. They are currently expanding into on-demand fintech and cryptocurrency support to meet the growing demand in the segment.

Fittingly, they have agreed to merge with Greenigde. This merger is not a rumor or in talks, but is already final and will be executed in Q3. [1]

Greenidge is a bitcoin miner that operates its own green power plant in Upstate New York. This is a special feature, because green energy is becoming more and more important in the crypto sector and mining, the process of "creating" bitcoin, is based on computationally intensive processes that require a lot of energy. Through their own green gas power plant, they can operate very profitably, and are far ahead of the competition.

Through the merger, Greenidge will be publicly tradable via Support.com.

WHY SHOULD THE SHARE PRICE RISE?

Currently the market cap of SPRT is about $100M USD, after the merger within the next months (no exact date yet, only Q3 is known [1]), the market cap will be about $1.6B, if we assume a price of $5 USD per share.

This is based on this formula:

5 USD (share price) \ 38M (outstanding shares) / 0.12388 (merge ratio) = ~1.6B (market cap after merger)*

Since the merger has been finally decided but not executed yet, the current ticker SPRT only considers support.com. Hence the current low market cap.

Therefore, for the time being, we only take a closer look at support's assets.

SUPPORT AS A SOLID BASE

Support.com currently holds 40M USD net cash. Net cash is cash that sits in the company after all deductions. After taxes, expenses and liabilities. Pure earned assets.

In addition, there are of course other assets such as real estate, hardware and the like that currently come to a value of 39M USD.

NET CASH	TOTAL ASSETS	TOTAL VALUE
40M USD	39M USD	79M USD

So if you were to liquidate the company now, you could realize cash withdrawals and realizations of 79M USD [2]. That doesn't take into account customer data, business relationships, future profits, existing contracts, etc. pp. All these things that actually contribute to the value of a company.

As a reminder, the market cap is ~100M USD. That means just the pure assets of just that one company is almost identical to the current valuation. And that doesn't even include the value of Greenidge.

If you think I have a point here, just wait and see. Because the real kicker is what Greenidge brings to the table.

GREENIDGE AS A MULTIPLIER

Greenidge can't be traded publicly yet (hence the merger) and is therefore still grossly undervalued compared to its direct competitors (e.g. RIOT). The nice thing is, you can compare these values very accurate because mining is really only about the hashrate. With this you can see how profitable a miner is running and where its market value is.

The hashrate of RIOT (the direct competitor) is 1.1 EH/s with 43MW and the expected output of SPRT should be 41MW and at the end of the year 45MW.

Why should be and not is? There was a ban in New York State on power plants being used for bitcoin mining. This ban has now been lifted and 100% of the juice can go to mining. [3]

That means Greenidge's performance is really ramping up lately. I did a detailed comparison of Greenidge with its two main competitors MARA and RIOT and researched and compared all the data by hand. Please check out this thread for that https://www.reddit.com/r/pennystocks/comments/o0l0ra/i_compared_sprt_with_its_two_main_competitors/

Here is just the table that shows the core values in comparison

STOCK	Marathon Digital Holding (MARA)	Riot Blockchain Inc. (RIOT)	Greenidge / Support (SPRT)
TRADING AT	~$30 USD	~$35 USD	~$4 USD
MARKET CAP	$2.9B USD	$3.35B USD	$1.6B USD (combined)
HASH RATE	1.46 EH/s	1 EH/s	1.1 EH/s [B]
MINING COST	$28 MWh	unknown [A]	$22 MWh
REVENUE 2020	$4.4M USD	$3.9M USD	$12M [C]
MINTED BTC 2020	254 BTC [D]	1,005 BTC	1,186 BTC
SOURCE	https://ir.marathondh.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1240/marathon-reports-first-quarter-2021-results	https://www.riotblockchain.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/101/riot-blockchain-announces-financial-highlights-for-the	https://corporate.support.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greenidge-SPRT-Merger-Release-FINAL.pdf

[A] no data found for that but they relocated to Massena, New York to reduce costs. The good news - Greenridges Power Plant is already located in NY.

[B] will increase to 2.6 EH/s in 2022 (expansion is already fully funded)

[C] this is only Greenidge though. Combined with support.com 2020 revenue of $44M it totals to $56M. The net cash of both companies combined is $70M USD. Net cash!!

[D] but they bought 4,812.66 BTC end of 2020 for a total of $150M USD. So they are holding a lot of BTC but did not mined it.

As I said, please check out the link to my detailed comparison (https://www.reddit.com/r/pennystocks/comments/o0l0ra/i_compared_sprt_with_its_two_main_competitors/) but from this data alone you can see that Greenidge is actually superior to its competitors in every aspect, mines more efficiently, generates more bitcoins and even makes more profit, but still only reaches half of the market cap.

If we now take into account the current valuation of Support plus the value Greenidge brings to the table, I think the market cap would have to at least double to be valued similarly to its direct competitors. Accordingly, the share price would have to rise from 5 USD to 10 USD.

POTENTIAL

I don't want to scare you off by saying that this price is even too low but my honest personal opinion is that this is even too conservatively calculated.

Greenidge will be the first US listed miner with its own 100% ecological green-energy power plant [4]. Green energy is an ever-burgeoning topic in the crypto discussion and is becoming more and more important. Elon Musk [5] brought the topic up again a few days ago when he announced that Tesla will accept BTC again if 50% of the miners are green. Greenidge is completely CO2 neutral [6].

Both companies are still growing (Greenidge more than Support) and have a nice roadmap with many interesting points. However, in this analysis, I have not considered the future prospects. If you take into account that Greenidge is still expanding its power plant (so it can further extend its lead in energy costs and capacity) and plans to expand its hashrate to 2.6 EH/s by 2022, you can see where the journey is going.

the roadmap shows there is great ambition

If one then also assumes that Bitcoin prices will tend to rise, then of course the revenue will rise even further.

As I said, it's important to me that you understand that all of these future projections are not included in the above calculation at all. There we are talking about the financial statements and balance sheets of the companies. All data is based on the real data and is not fantasy dollars, rumors or possible outlooks but only facts.

CONCLUSION

I am bullish. That's for sure. But I'm not connected to the companies or anything. I didn't know either company before doing my research. I formed my opinion independently and spent days going through press releases, financial statements and balance sheets to research all the data directly at the source.

I have been invested for a few days, but I am not a financial expert. I share with you my findings because I am personally convinced of them. I invite you to discuss and I have linked you some relevant sources to verify what I wrote and to make your own decisions.

In my opinion, the share price has to go up. All the facts are in favor of it. Why it has not exploded yet has two reasons in my opinion.

no hype
the stock is massively shorted by institutions. More than almost any other stock.

See this screenshots with filters visible to rebuild the view on Yahoo for yourself.

Look at how much the short float increased in the last weeks. This stock is artificially held down. Maybe until the merger took place, I don't know yet but I am already investigating it and start to see a pattern. Again, you can look at the short float increase at yahoo or any other tool.

pay special attention to the red line that is showing the rising short % of float

Within the next days I will make a dedicated post about the short situation of this stock but again, that is not what this is about. In this DD I only focused on hard facts and validation.

I look forward to discuss with you!

SOURCES

[1] Merger Agreement https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1104855/000119312521091327/d131914d425.htm

[2] Net Cash / Assets Support https://www.investing.com/equities/support.com-financial-summary

[3] Crypto Mining Bill NY https://www.coindesk.com/new-york-crypto-mining-bill-dies-in-assembly-after-passing-state-senate

[4] official merger announcement https://corporate.support.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greenidge-SPRT-Merger-Announcement-032221-FINAL.pdf

[5] Elon Musk Green-Energy https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-bitcoin-tesla-payment-green-energy-environment-2021-6

[6] Greenidge carbon neutral https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/greenidge-generation-bitcoin-mining-operation-to-be-carbon-neutral-in-2021-and-beyond-301291782.html

TickerDatabase entries updated:

Ticker	Price
RIOT	34.3
SPRT	4.09
TSLA	616.6
COST	384.75
EH	39.29
MARA	30.06

In A First, NASCAR Driver To Be Paid Entirely In Cryptocurrency, Including Bitcoin, Litecoin

TDLR

•Landon Cassill will be the first NASCAR driver to receive his entire paycheck in cryptocurrency

•in a new sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency brokerage platform Voyager Digital Ltd

•The NASCAR event is also an example of how cryptocurrencies are gaining increasing relevance

source

It's time we met up | Ethereum meetup this week

Good day fellas! Not active on reddit much but I've been in this space since '17. I've been involved with AI mostly but the more I read about crypto, the more I realized how big of an opportunity this is. It's like the early internet - only better, fairer, financier and softwarier.

This year, I've made the commitment to make a career out of crypto. If you're in the same boat as me, you'll notice a distinct lack of community in our country. That's why I've started a meetup group (yes, one more darned group). I'm looking to build a quality community and get like minded people like us connected.

If that sounds like you, and you see beyond the hype and the trading and the moons... do check out the group. We're discussing Ethereum this week (a bit beginner side). And also the latest news about Bitcoin adoption in El-Salvador and what that means for Crypto.

Would love to see you there. Let's make things happen!

https://www.meetup.com/crypto-cafe/events/278916004/